This week, we took part in the IUPAC Empowering Women in Chemistry Global Breakfast event. It happened during a time when I’m swamped in grading (which reproducibly happens from week 2 to week 15 of each semester). Nevertheless, I thought it would be worthwhile to record some thoughts about the event. Plus, I want to learn how to embed tweets in a blog post.
Continue readingIt’s Homecoming weekend at Brockport and Mandy, the voice-activated periodic table is showing off her school pride with green and gold periodic trends!
The four blocks of the periodic table.
OK, perhaps her colors are a little bit off, but give her a break; she’s a periodic table for crying out loud. Does your periodic table have this much school pride?
Atomic weight – green is light and gold is heavy.
On April 28th, 2018, my first two undergraduate students at Brockport gave their first poster presentation at a professional meeting.
Shauna and Megan – ready to answer the tough questions.
The meeting was held at The College at Brockport this year. There were 50 or so posters and about 100 attendees. We also had a few oral presentations and the keynote speaker was Brockport alum Dr. Michael Nicholson of Precision BioSciences.
Megan and Shauna presented their first semester’s work on developing sensors and methods for OMIS: the Open Millifluidic Inquiry System. Shauna is developing a method to perform alkalinity measurements in small volumes under dynamic flow conditions and Megan is working on a pH sensor based on anodically electrolyzed iridium oxide films. They’ve made some great progress not only building confidence in their laboratory skills but also learning how to present their research (in addition to actually doing the work). I’d consider that a good set of outcomes for their first semester in independent study (as Freshmen, no less). Expect big things from these ladies.
P.S. Happy Star Wars Day.
Last week, I posted an early photo of a Chemistry lab from Brockport. Not to be outdone, my wife Rozenn (historian of the Western Monroe Historical Society at the Morgan Manning House) found this picture in one of her books:
The caption for the picture reads:
The [Brockport] Chemistry Laboratory: The 1899 yearbook describes the chemistry laboratory as “one of the best appointed in the state, having ample table room for 50 students at one time … The department has over $2,500 worth of physical apparatus, over 2,500 stereopticon slides and some 3,000 specimens.”
That $2,500 in instrumentation would be a bit over 70 thousand in today’s dollars, and I’m happy to say that our department has far more instrumentation than that. The reference to thousands of specimens and stereopticon slides got me thinking about what was taught in Chemistry 118 years ago (hey that’s one year for every element on the periodic table). A quick web search brought me to this article, (which is behind a paywall if you don’t have access to ACS journals) that reviews an historical Chemistry textbook from 1809. It was written by Jane Marcet to “… provide women with a method of educating themselves in chemistry …” and uses a conversational style that is not seen in contemporary instructional materials. This #ThrowbackThursday has me thinking about revisiting some teaching styles (to justify procrastinating on that pile of grading for one more day).
From the Daily Eagle, courtesy of librarian Charlie Cowling, a snapshot of Chemistry instruction from the 1950s. Apparently, Chemistry wasn’t dangerous enough to necessitate safety goggles back then, (but it was too dangerous for girls…). How times have changed.
Back in the 1950s the College was, as its own literature stated, a “single purpose” institution, and that purpose was teacher training. Later in the mid-1960s the College would as part of its ongoing expansion become a comprehensive liberal arts college, with various majors, such as chemistry for example. But before then we still were teaching chemistry here, to aspiring science teachers, and one of the faculty was Robert Brandauer, who taught here from 1946-1970.
In a 1947 Stylus article he is described as “…the man with a million dollar smile…” He had an MS in Chemistry from Cornell (1939,) and at the time was working on his doctorate. In a curious coincidence he had previously taught at Roberts College in Istanbul, where Professor Martin Rogers had also taught. Faculty like Brandauer were in from the beginning of that incredible arc the school traveled, from a small teachers college with less than 1,000 students to a major comprehensive institution with almost 10,000 students.